A prominent Lebanese cleric said here on Sunday that Muslims and Arab nations will not recognize a US-installedgovernment in Iraq after the war. Sheikh Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah denounced the US' post-war plan for Iraq, reiterating that the Muslim and Arab community will confront any plan of the kind that the US is contemplating. The Lebanese alim further denounced pronouncements by US officialsthat the coalition will have priority in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. Sheikh Fadlallah noted that Bush administration officials recently announced that there is no plan to change the historical ruling set-upin Iraq, which means the Shias will receive no special privileges in the next Iraqi regime.
If religion isn't a criterion for privilege, I guess that's so...
Washington, intending to obtain a say in the current Iraqi regime,encouraged Iraq to launch a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s and provided it political, economic and military support,which then paved the way for its invasion of Kuwait, Fadlallah said. He then noted that Iraq's occupation of Kuwait provided the pretext for the US to increase its presence in the Middle East region by claiming its presence was necessary to defend the Persian Gulf sheikdoms from Iraqi aggression. Fadlallah said that Washington has since reversed its policy in Iraq. It now wants to overthrow its puppet regime there on the pretext that it is a danger to its neighbors, citing the two bloody wars Iraq waged against Iran and Kuwait, adding that the US has launched the current war precisely to bring another puppet to run the country. On the incredible resistance of the Iraqi people against the US invasion, he said that the US underestimated the Iraqi nation, stressing that this nation has proven to be a tremendous force in the the way of US and British military operations. |